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grown up

“I hope you find what you’re looking for.”, she said. As I slowly walked away from her desk. Life is all about last looks, this one was no exception.

I imagined myself doing different things with my life. Going on different adventures, then what was happening before me. I never imagined coming back home. I never thought that failing was an option. As I always do, I picked myself up and started over. Starting over by going home until I come back to this fucking city. I am going home to regroup then come back to this town to be somebody. Anybody then the person I was before. Not the broken person I was when I came here.

Big cities don’t take to kindly to lonely hearts. Broken people don’t always find what they are looking for. But I will be the exception. The exception to the rule.

I walked away from her office and watched the room glitter with the sunlight. The same golden color. The same sparkle from the afternoon sun. What I would give to be outside but instead, I am saying goodbye to everything that was familiar.

Life doesn’t prepare you for goodbyes. Life doesn’t prepare you for last looks and the words that haunt you after. Instead, you move forward and hope for the best. Praying, wishing, hoping, that all of this will be a distant memory. Just another story to add in the book of life.

It’s been six years since I have been back. Six years and I still feel like like a visitor in my hometown. This doesn’t feel like home but neither did that big city. Which is why I felt the need to burn my bridges and watch them crumble behind me.

Yet, those words haunt me.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

As I make another last look through the glistening rays of the sun behind me.

Ten years doesn’t seem like a long time. When you still refer to everything in the past as 2006. Ten years ago, man. Ten years ago. 2006 was such a pivotal year of growing up for me. I find myself going back to that year in photographs, nostalgia, and through listening to albums that seem like came out yesterday.

Ten years ago, I sat in my parents guest bedroom, staring out the window. I laid in my bed watching the clouds go from grey to slate. Hearing every cloud rupture with anger and sadness, as the rain fell from the sky. In a room I didn’t grow up in. In a room, I felt like I kept coming back too. I was in-between places, still trying to figure out what I wanted. This wasn’t home but Fresno wasn’t home either. Where do I belong? Where do I fit in?

Ten years ago, I didn’t want to go back to school. Even though I knew getting older meant it would be harder for me to do things. My odds were against me. I was finding myself fearful of people and a fear of my peers is what always told me not to go back to school. It takes me 10 minutes to get out of my car to do simple tasks, without feeling like the world was against me. I didn’t realize I was sick. I didn’t realize that this wasn’t normal.

Ten years ago, I let the wrong people in. I let people hurt me. I let people use me. I let people cloud my judgement of what good really was. Instead I harbored a pain so great that caused me to cut open my outsides, to understand what my insides were feeling. I was burning in this vessel of a body, with this need to please everyone. To be there for everyone, while people have done nothing but watch me fade in the background.

Ten years ago, I thought I was going to marry a variety of different people. A drummer in one band, a bass player in another. Plotting how one day they would look at me differently then they had in the past. That I wouldn’t be self-conscious. I wouldn’t be awkward. They would look straight into me, as I have looked up at them, many times before.

Ten years ago, I feel in love too easily. Always someone different. Always people I shouldn’t have loved. But I wanted to love as I always felt in the deep depths of my heart. How they play out in movies and we see on the big screen. I was hopeless in wanting something I wasn’t prepared to understand. In a way I used people. I just wanted what everyone else had. A hand to hold to keep themselves from falling apart. Because sad was better than lonely. And now I can’t remember the name of the first boy I kissed.

Ten years ago, I wanted amazing things to happen to me. I wanted to stand in an open place and watch life happen to me. In a big city, miles away from my mediocre small town. Far from the same people I see every day. Maybe if for once instead of running, I would finally allow things to happen. Watch love open doors, see my careers unfold, watch myself change from strange into something beautiful. I waited forever for things to happen. I waited for people to move. I waited for things to happen. I waited too long and feel as if I am running out of time.

Ten years ago, an album came out that changed my life. I didn’t think it would. Many albums come and go and still I remember this as if it was yesterday. From the weather changing from the warm fall days to the chill of cold of the soon to be winter months. How it felt wrong to buy it from some mass production corporation, how I needed to purchase the album how I had purchased all their albums. Straight from the band, straight from the source. How I ripped open the package and watched my life change in front of my eyes. No one understands how that feels. How something so simple as opening a padded envelope could change your life in so many magical ways. How I needed to get out of my house and play every song loudly. Loud enough to where my insides would wake up. How every cigarette I smoked, I exhaled out the smoke and watched the smoke slowly leave my lungs open to the cold air. The rain kept falling, as this soundtrack continued to play. How perfect this seemed. My favorite band, playing the songs that for that moment I didn’t understand. It didn’t matter how many times the windshield wipers wiped my windshield clear, the rain still managed to leave a mark. Which is how I feel about this album. No matter how many times I try to wipe this away, a small mark still remains. I could write forever about every line in the songs. I could. I have. But today, I want to live in it’s memory.

Ten years ago, I didn’t understand. Ten years later, I finally know. We are not suppose to fit in. We are not suppose to be normal. Sometimes you don’t realize how bad you’re hurting until the years pass and you become someone else. Someone completely different then the person you were ten years ago. Its hard to come out of the darkness and back into the light. It’s hard to understand that even though we feel completely alone, we are never truly alone. Even when you think you can’t start over, life throws you something completely unexpected.

Today, I watch the rain fall from the sky to the tops of each tree and rooftop, from some place far from home. I think back on those memories. I think back to my sentiments and feelings. Ten years ago, I had no idea where I was going. I stopped believing in love. I stopped believing in myself in the years in took to get here. I stopped wanting to marry the boys that would never love me. I stopped dying for a hand to hold. Ten years ago, seemed like such a long time ago. Now, I sit here wondering what happens next.

I have spent a great deal of my childhood being called weird. To the point that the word always seemed like an insult to me. I was different, I was strange, I wasn’t what people expected, but most of all I was weird. Weird has always been one of those words, that hits me to the core. Maybe, because I had been associated with it for so long that I have grown to hate it. I wasn’t normal, I was weird. I didn’t like what you liked, therefore I was different. Everyone wants to be accepted and anyone that challenges that is wrong. People can be as cruel as school children can be.

I obsess over every little thing. I love spoken word and written dialogue. I write lyrics to songs I love all over my arms. If I hear something that hits me like a ton of bricks, I write it down, everything. If it makes me sad, if it breaks my heart, everything. If I could tattoo words all over my body, I would. I get excited over a piece of music or hearing an album, that reminds me of a time in my life that people wouldn’t understand. I love things that people don’t understand. I love people that people would never understand. Those are just my quirks that make up my whole existence. I am not gonna sit and lie to you. I am not going to pretend to love something because you love it too. I will not act a certain way just to relate to someone else. I don’t like the same music as everyone else did or I cared too passionately about something that everyone else disregarded. I cared about background characters, written word and imagery as opposed to what was the hottest and latest in the game. I stick out like a sore thumb. Getting overly excited for the boring and mundane, where everyone else loved the glittery and flashy. I become uncomfortable with the attention. I become obsessed with simple conversations and deep thoughts then I do with moving in a hundred different ways. Because that’s real to me. What other people forget is what I hold dear to me. But that makes me weird?

Instead I find ways to understand my madness. I will not hide my pain or push aside my sadness. I will not make excuses for who I am because its not what you want to see. I love people just as they are in their flawed missed up imperfections. But people have a funny way of trying to change you. Trying to make you into something and someone you are not. What they don’t understand is what makes you weird, sets you free. What sets you apart makes you a stronger person in the end. I have allowed people to call me a variety of different names and sounds. I have allowed them to. Because I was never good enough. I was too weak to understand that what sets you apart, sets you free. When all the fingers point at you, you start to believe them. When you’re different everyone expects you to be just like they are. Insecure and afraid of who they really are. But you’re the different one, you’re the weird one. The one that stood against the grain. I am not who you want me to be. I never will be. I won’t cry or obsess about it. I will not bend and break because of it. I will not change myself to fit any of the moods people want me to be.

What’s weird to you, isn’t weird to me. What’s weird to you, will always make me weird. I am not ashamed to be who I am, why are you ashamed of you?

Years go by, and you find yourself still thinking things through. The tiny moments, the big moments, everything and in between. Maybe I never loved you as much as you loved you. That’s fine, I’m good. Thats the thing with memories, we pray to forget and find ourselves starving to remember. Thanks for the memories, but I am not holding on anymore. Days go by and I realized you loved you, better than anyone else could.

Turn a new leaf, change. Speak about how much you changed because you’re only impressing yourself. You can preach all you want. You can tell every single soul, I was wrong. I don’t care anymore. I don’t. I was crazy. I was the weird one. I was everything you want to tell everyone. Tell them. Your words mean nothing to me. When you look in the mirror you’re gonna realize, you’re just as bad as I am. Maybe worse. At least I have the common decency to admit my faults. I was wrong. I was stupid, but now I know.

..now I know. I’m better sleeping on my own.

You’re perfect. You’re better than everyone else. You’re so fucking talented and everyone else is a fucking chump. Well, guess what? Maybe you’re right, but I’d like to think you’re wrong. Even perfect people have flaws and you have them all. Every word you told me will come back to haunt you. Or maybe it won’t. I couldn’t care less any more. I hope you know that one day, you’re gonna need somebody and they won’t be there. Even the people that love you can hurt you. “Sorry” doesn’t change the past, maybe you should know that.

When the song plays out and you’re all alone, I hope my words will find you. The only person you cared enough about was yourself. The only person you could truly love is yourself. That’s fine, that’s good, I’m cool. Now go on, love yourself.

vin·dic·tive: having or showing a strong or unreasoning desire for revenge.

The other day a good friend of mine called me “Vindictive”, over a situation that was beyond my control. To sound vague, I am just going to state the situation is not that important. Truth is I never truly stated what really happened. Nor, am I going to start. Some battles are just easier to let go and others were just not a battle to begin with. It’s human nature to crave the drama, to love the dramatics of people’s actions. If we are being truly honest with ourselves, sometimes people are not meant to be friends. Instead of finding myself and putting myself in a position of being immature, I just refused to say anything. I could have just let the word go. Brush it out of my mind, but being who I am I haven’t. I find myself repeating the word and asking myself if I really am being vindictive.

I am not trying to draw attention to any particular situation. Life is crazy sometimes and people will always make their own assumption of things. There are some moments in my life I wish I could be vindictive. I wish I could be really mean and say everything I feel inside. I could spew out the same hate and mistreatment that others have thrown on me. None of which would make me feel any better. I could be really mean if I wanted to be. I could act out every dramatic scenario known to mankind, but I wouldn’t. I could be upset about various things that go on in my life or I can just take everything with a grain of salt. Even by saying nothing, I still come out like a villain. Childish, immature, and of course vindictive.

In the course of a few months, my life has changed. With life changes come friendship changes. I don’t blame anyone. As much as I would like to be angry, no one is to blame. Life happens and no matter how much you want to escape it, its coming toward you full speed ahead. No one tells you that when you’re growing up, your friendships change. In the process of being grown up, you lose people that meant the absolutely world to you. Nothing malicious, nothing mean, just life continues to go on. The truth is sometimes people are meant to be in your life for a limited time and as much as everyone loves a great juicy story, there isn’t one to tell. It hurts to have to come to that realization. Sometimes you grow out of your friendships and sometimes you see friendships for what they truly were. A great time in your life that you needed and sadly have to move on from.

You can’t stop people from believing what they want to believe. As much as you want to you can’t stop people from leaving. Reality is there is nothing left to say. All the dramatics I want to throw out are just my emotions seeping through. It’s just my sadness trying to make sense of growing out of friendships. People grow up eventually and sometimes you out grow your friendships. Sometimes I want to say everything I feel in my heart, but there really is nothing left to say. I am allowing people to believe what they want to believe.

I have a hard time letting things go. Letting go is hard when its all you have left to hold on too. It’s in my nature to keep everything. Packed away until I am ready to let go. Things I should have thrown away ages ago. Ticket stubs, receipts, letters from people I haven’t talked to in years. Little mementos, relics of the past that seem like absolute clutter and trash to the naked eye, but mean everything to me. I put so much power behind these items that they become characters themselves. Its almost as if these memories manifest themselves into these mementos, that throwing them away throws away those feelings and sentiments.

My life seems so invested in things I felt happened days ago, when in reality its been years. This power I put behind memories, I can’t help but hold on to things hoping to find that magic again. I look at these relics spilled on to the floor, falling out of books/notebooks, and wonder whats missing in my present that can’t help me shake the past. The past wasn’t perfect, I am no where near the person I was back then, and yet I can’t help but be in love with the past. I loved so many things, so many people and as years go by, I watch things fray and fall apart. I find myself romanticizing this nostalgia and everything that came with it. Seems like only yesterday I was there. Only yesterday my heart was beating faster and I couldn’t shake this feeling in my soul. Even the bad has a beautiful memory, wrapped with a melodramatic soundtrack of my favorite band, and a filter only I could come up with.

Throwing these things away throws away the magic these memories hold. I just want to hold on a little bit longer. I want to hold on to every single word, every single moment, every single memory. Everything. Until I can’t remember a face, a lyric, a name, and a song. Until the band plays it’s last encore and we are left with nothing but the dust of the afterglow. This nostalgia will only break my heart but I can’t help it. I can’t help pretending that everything was once beautiful, even when everything was hurting. I want to be locked in these memories until I have nothing left inside anymore. Holding on to these ticket stubs and holding on to feelings that meant the absolute world to me.

I know this will all disappear. One day I will have to let go of everything that is holding me back. But can I stay here before letters turn to dust and photographs begin to fade. Before we all grow old and completely disappear.

I thought about her for the first time in years. It was bound to happen. When you stop being friends with someone, you pretend they don’t exist. You wish them well and go on with your life. Maybe it was the reconnecting with my favorite band, but for the first time I could say her name without negativity attached behind it. Without feeling any aspect of animosity toward her. Where I didn’t feel any hatred, I felt nothing. Dare I say, I felt a hint of sadness? I don’t know. I get these moments in my life where I believe for a second I can be friends with people from my past. Retain that sense of friendship if only for nostalgic purposes. I have to be honest, I miss people. However, I don’t miss the drama, I don’t miss the lies, etc.

For the first time I felt no animosity toward the past. Where I wanted to let bygones be bygones and sit and talk about everything and in-between. Growing up is harder than it looks. Some of us grow up and change, while others can’t help but remain the same. Here I thought I was the grown up that I had been the one growing up, when in reality I am the one struggling to change. Growing up means letting go of all the hatred and animosity of the past, but I couldn’t do it. Its like I remember why it started, why it happened, and I can’t change the past. I can’t go back and change words or reactions. In the past I had this desperation to be someone else and it never happened. Instead I stayed the same person I had always been. I don’t remember where this desperation to be someone happened. Somewhere between here and there, I forgot what it felt like to be myself. I find the guilt of my own problems seep into this nostalgia, and sometimes I wish I still had someone to talk about the past with.

We were those crazy kids. Those crazy kids that would run at every chance to be in a big city. Small town girls with big city dreams. One of us stayed a dreamer and the other grew up in reality. I am surrounded by reality but it’s the dreaming that still haunts me. The older I get the more I wish I could just ask you a million different things. I wonder if certain things still bother you that did back then. Little things, big things, stupid insignificant things. I wonder if it bothers you that people are married that probably shouldn’t be. I wonder if it bothers you that the same people are having kids who said they wouldn’t. Who said they only wanted to with you. Because sometimes it bothers me, and I guess I just wonder if it bothers you too.

I know we grow up and become even less of our former selves, but I can’t help but wonder. Nostalgia has a funny way of letting you down. Making you remember things and people as they were, only in memory. Some days I wonder what I would do if I saw you again. I know I wouldn’t do a thing. If I saw you on the street, I would forget you just the same. We are not those crazy kids anymore. If we were still friends after all these years, we would have found a way to drift apart. Sometimes I miss you and I know I shouldn’t. But sometimes when I hear a song, or hear a funny story, or see someone from our past, I can’t help but laugh. We grew up and I finally understand now. In order to grow up we have to let go of our nostalgia to make way for our reality. We had to drift apart to be who we need to be. I am still searching and you’ve already found yourself.

I have heard that how you live is a representation of yourself. How you are at home is a reflection of your inner being. This way of showing the world the part of yourself you don’t show to the world. At this current moment, at this current time, how I live in my surroundings is surrounded by clutter. Which I find rather odd. Seeing that I am a rather neat person. I can’t stand being around mess and chaos. Yet for the past couple of months, I have surrounded myself with this overly exhausting surrounding of extreme clutter.

I didn’t ask for this. It just sort of happened, then spanned out of control. Beyond my control. “I’ll get to it when I get to it”, is what I tell myself. Just save everything for tomorrow. Tomorrow comes, tomorrow goes, still the clutter remains. I’ll be completely honest, I hate it. I know this isn’t who I am. I watch the stack of papers go from 2 to 20. I watch the piles of clothes become larger and larger. Receipts seem to keep a permanent residence on the floor. Current mail and postage ready to be sent out, still stuck on chairs and tables. For whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to stick to a routine of fixing it. I watch the dust collect on the collection of things. Watch everything that has a place become the chaos that surrounds my room.

I’ll get to it when I get to it.

I wonder if this is a reflection of myself. Reflecting everything that I feel on the inside. This chaotic way of coming back to things, when I see fit. Waiting for things to happen on their own, instead of getting up and doing things. It’s been a few months of reflection and recollections. Growing up and moving on. Trying to piece back together the past, smooth out the present, to make way for the future.

No.

I am just to lazy to focus on what is in front of me. Instead of cleaning up my surroundings, I am becoming suffocated by them. Each item is taunting me, eating away at my insides. Purchases, I should have never made. Clothes, I should have put away. Every little thing has a purpose and a place, instead I am watching it collect a life form of itself. This clutter is my absolute exhaustion, silently killing me. I want to rid myself of these material things, start over as a simple minded person. Pack up all my things in boxes and give them away. I don’t need anything as much as I thought I needed it.

I don’t, I swear.

The more I stare at this clutter, the more I wonder if it’s all in my head. If every single thing I believe inside, is really a reflection of what I see on the outside. What do I know. I watch myself collect more things, to place on top of more things, to hide how I feel inside. I grow tired making up excuses for my mess when I feel like a mess inside. I guess if you’re wondering how I feel, just take a long hard look at my room. Take hold of the notebooks, novels, notes, and envelopes, collecting dust. Take note of the broken hangers and the couple pairs of shoes on the floor. Watch as the tiny pieces of paper, continue to stay stationed on the floor. It’s not because I am busy, it’s just that I don’t know anymore.

This clutter is consuming me. This clutter is taking over my life. This clutter has to go, so I can finally move on with my life.

We are no longer who we say we are. We are slowly drifting further from who we were when we started. Growing up and accepting life’s responsibilities of being grown up. Different places, different faces, different times, changing us into who we are suppose to be. It doesn’t matter where we are going, but we end up further from where we started. “Don’t ever change”, you would once say. Now all I want to do is be someone else, some place else.

Running away is easy. Run to the hills where no one will find you. Run to the streets and to the oceans that will separate you from me. I’ve run to bigger cities with their ever eclipsing skyscrapers, to escape these thoughts. To escape my footsteps that stay cemented on the grounds, that have been repaved to be broken again. How big the city seems that makes me feel small, how small my hometown is that never let me grow. I can’t help but watch it all happen all over again. I am growing older but feeling the same. In the same places in different spaces. Your soul feels exposed when the light hits you just right. In a town where everyone knows your secrets and you can’t help but hide from the lies that always seem like truths. Its not where you’re going, it’s how far and fast you can leave this place. Away from familiar faces and away from the boring mundane familiarity of yesterday. If I stand still, I watch everything pass me by.

Miles from home you tend to still feel alone. You hang on to different experiences to make you different. To feel like someone else in some place else. All life is, is a bunch of experiences to make you grow up. Be different, be weird, be who you’re suppose to be. Inside you’re aware of how phony you feel. Even 300 miles from home, you still yearn to be home. Still seek comfort in the familiar that you’ve tried desperately to escape. I spent a lot of time running away from my hometown. Wishing I was somewhere else, any where but here. Even being 300 miles away, I am still wishing to be somewhere else. I am still wanting to be anywhere but here in this moment. Everyone once in a while, when the light hits just right my hometown feels like home to me.

Being home I don’t feel so alone. Even after a while people leave and go off to far off destinations. I am a plane ride away from my next adventure. Living in and out of a big fat suitcase and still I linger on. Home is just a concept to make you feel something you can’t explain. Home is another word for failure and all it’s hurtful things. Home is how I feel when ever I am here with you. For the first time all these love letters I have written to other cities seem misplaced. After all these years I search for things to remind me of you, and here I am again.

Home is not a concept in my mind. Home is my feet planted firmly on the ground. Across the cracked pavements of the streets I know by heart. Home is a house that sits empty on gravel street in my memory. Even after all these years. After all the places I’ve lived. All the places I made my home, in cities bigger than my hometown. It’s my hometown I come back to. It’s my hometown that makes being alone not feel lonely anymore. It’s in my hometown that I feel that I have something, when I lost everything in sight.

For the first time I am home, even when I have failed miserably inside. It doesn’t hurt me anymore.

The older I become, the more I realize I don’t owe anyone any explanation. Its not that I want to be secretive, its that I choose to keep a part of myself private. It’s my own personal choice to pick and choose what I want people to know. If I want to share a piece of myself, its on my own terms and good graces. I shouldn’t have to explain myself and my actions. I shouldn’t have to apologize for things that are beyond my control. I shouldn’t have to pretend to be okay with things that I was never okay with to begin with. If we are all openly honest with ourselves, why do we become so secretive in the first place? I have spent a lifetime of making excuses and making apologizes, that now everything feels empty to me.

This is in no way shape or form to get on anyone’s bad side. I am not doing this on purpose or to make anyone upset. If I have to be completely honest, I don’t owe anyone any explanation. I really don’t. If I don’t want to share my life, I have my own reasons. I know what I want to share with people and why. I don’t have any obligation to open myself up to people, if I don’t want to. I don’t mean to be rude, I don’t mean to be difficult, its just how I am. Its my own personal preference to pick and choose what I want to tell people. How I want to express myself. Its not that I am secretive, in all honesty its no one’s business but my own. What I do share does not give people an open invite to dictate what I do or judge who I am. I run my life, you do not. You are not entitled to know about my life and my whereabouts without my permission. You can make all the assumptions all you fit pleasing, but reality is you never knew me at all. We live in a world where our every whereabout is spilled out in public social forms for all to see. For everyone to comment and generate their own opinions as they see fit. It’s nobodies business but my own, why I do the things I do. It’s not in my nature to answer to anyone, or say what I am doing. I don’t have to. This is my life and I live it as I damn well please.

If I want to go on adventures every weekend, I will. If I want to move to another state without telling a single soul, I will. If I want to plan a vacation a month, I will. The only person I have to answer to is myself.

If it makes you feel better, I could make up a thousand excuses. Tell you everything you want to hear. Make everything up just to make you feel better. Even the people who know me best are people that are surprised to find something new about myself. I am not guarding myself from hurt. I am not keeping secrets from anyone. I just want to keep a piece of myself for myself without the attention of others. I am so tired of having to discuss my whereabouts to anyone. I am so tired of having to discuss why I do the things I do. My life is not some public spectacle to generate the most “likes” on the internet. I could care less about your public opinions of me and my welfare. How much money I spend, how much money I make, why I do the things I do, is my business and my business alone. Yes it is nice to do these things. Yes, I am very lucky. It’s nobodies business but my own.

If I don’t feel like sharing with the class, I won’t. If I don’t feel like telling anyone how I feel, I won’t.

None of this gives anyone a reason to think they know me best. You don’t know me, even if you think I do. If I don’t choose to share things with people doesn’t mean I haven’t been through things. Doesn’t mean that I haven’t had my own struggles and my own personal breakdowns. If I don’t share my problems on the internet doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I just choose to deal with them on my own, the best way I can. When I am ready to tell the world how I feel, I will. When I am ready to be open, I will. Until that moment, I will keep to myself and keep our of your way.

If it keeps on your mean side so be it. I am only allowed to make myself happy, not you.